SECTION 2: THE TEACHER-EXPERIENCE STORY
5.1 INTRODUCTION
and the traditional practices of thinking and working, which does little to change and challenge how the bureaucracy continues to image teachers and the work they do. The bureaucracy itself is guilty of strategic mimicry in its policy initiatives.
Why would the bureaucracy employ traditional oppressive practices to bring about new ways of thinking and working for quality schooling, teaching and learning? While some teachers resist the dominant practices that imprison and limit who we are and what we can become, it is disturbing to acknowledge that teachers and the bureaucracy managing teachers continue to work towards a socially-unjust education system that is dangerous to our children and our country.
CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
development? By implication it was seeking to explore how the training enhanced professionalism and professionality of teachers and their capacity to enable school development as envisaged in the IQMS. In this section an overview of the study is presented in the light of the critical questions set forth in chapter 1.
In the next few paragraphs I will provide my interpretation, drawing from findings and analysis of the four narratives that I reconstructed, to describe the experiences of the key stakeholders about the workings of the cascade model (the model as a process and a strategy or tool for change in terms of the overarching research question.
The research developed through a range of data sources accessed to understand the workings of the model. It shows that the cascade model worked to de-professionalize, and intensify and maintain the status quo for teachers. Located predominantly in the traditional and behaviorist paradigm of Zeichner’s alternative paradigms for teacher development, the model worked to mimic the shift from a bureaucratically-controlled initiative to change schools to schools and teachers as agents of change and development.
• The training through the cascade model works to perpetuate a top-down, one dimensional, decontextualised and technicist approach to teacher development.
• The model does not work to enhance professionality and professionalism necessary for development of teachers at the site of the school
5.2.1 The training through the cascade model works to perpetuate a top-down, one dimensional, decontextualised and technicist approach to teacher development.
The analysis of documents used in the IQMS cascade revealed that the flow of information in the cascade is largely dominated by a top-down approach, with supposed expertise concentrated at the top of the cascade structure. This one-way flow of information means that ‘dialogue, being a pillar for effective and meaningful teacher development practice, is absent. In addition to the cascade being top-down, too much time for training and development within the cascade is devoted at the top structures, where policies are influenced and less time is devoted at the lower structures or rungs, where policies are implemented. This traditional approach to the process of training and development of teachers maintains the status quo of teachers as recipients of knowledge and as mere conduits for the transmission of skills. Fixed at either end of the continuum, DoE officials are responsible for thinking and planning the process and teachers receive and adopt the “packaged’ product at the end of the process, without question. Teachers are perceived ‘as docile bodies’ (Smyth and Shacklock 1999) in this process and this signals why development at the site of the school is technical and superficial.
The analysis of data produced from DoE officials emphasize the model as a cost effective and time efficient mechanism for policy implementation in schools. From this emphasis as the basis on which the model works, the transmission of skills becomes the focus of the behaviour change in teachers. From the behaviorist paradigm (Zeichner) of teacher development, the cascade model is purely one of ‘skills transmission’ rather than a space
for new knowledge and values and attitudes for better ways of thinking and working as professionals in particular schooling contexts found in South Africa. Large cohorts of teachers, as apprentices and technicians, are assembled to learn and follow a set of procedures laid down to manage the implementation of IQMS in limited time. This is done to save time and cost and ensure that the DoE is able to carry out that which it considered and planned to make schools work. The trainers are to ensure that teachers are undergoing developmental workshops, are adequately prepared to train and implement new policies in their respective schools.
The DoE’s insistence on using a model that is in contradiction to the agenda for transformation and the new policies like IQMS that are in place informs us that it is not serious in supporting change intended through the policies. This informs us that 14 years into the new education system since 1994, the DoE is still involved in ‘strategic simulation’ or ‘mimicry’ about how teachers are developed. Drawing from Zeichner’s paradigms, the DoE, while wanting to be seen to be effecting transformation into the education system, it is operating within the traditional craft paradigm. In this paradigm DoE uses a top-down, centre-periphery strategy to impose change at schools, including the matters of teacher development.
• Maintenance of status quo: ‘strategic simulation’.
• Imaging teachers as factory workers: Intensification crisis.
• De-professionalisation of teachers.
In the following paragraphs I will explain how the model achieves each of the above.
5.2.2 The model does not work to enhance professionality and professionalism necessary for development of teachers and schools.
The findings from the experiences of School Training Teams reveal that the cascade model does not only preclude teachers from active participation in their training and development, but it downplays their experiences as well. When teachers are invited to a workshop, they do not come as “empty vessels” to be filled up by other experts. Instead they come with varied experiences, first about teacher development and, secondly about situational school experiences.
For meaningful teacher development, teachers understand the need to collaborate with peers, engage in intellectual inquiry and keep abreast of the latest research trends, but the Department of Education officials do little to create or open up spaces for meaningful engagement and dialogue. Teacher development through the cascade is reduced to merely bringing in the experts to do a workshop, and limited opportunities are available for dialogue and meaning making. This lack of communication and sense-making of the new policy results in a decontextualised, disembodied experience. It was also lacking in opportunities to change teachers’ values and attitudes towards their personal and professional development appropriate to their respective schools. Their knowledge about what change was needed was poor, and this threatened the professionalism that IQMS was designed to develop.
An essential, although increasingly scarce, commodity for teacher learning is ‘time’
(Neito 2003). According to Neito (2003) excellent teachers do not develop to their best at graduation or from attending workshops. Instead teachers are always in the process of
‘becoming’. Given the dynamics of their work they need to continuously discover who they are and what they stand for through their dialogue and collaboration with peers, through ongoing and consistent study and through reflection about craft.
Furthermore, the three-day workshop and tight schedule for the implementation deadlines associated with the cascade model meant that teachers being developed were not afforded sufficient time to engage with the content being cascaded or to discover strategies as to how this content could be used in their school contexts. In addition, School Training teams felt that their training on the cascade was a one-size-fits-all approach and that the activity was not an intellectual experience.
If the culture of teacher preparation is to change, one way to begin is to advance the model of teachers as intellectuals. Teachers as intellectuals begin to enquire about what development mean to them, and how they participate in their development through networks, dialogue and debates. This means providing time and support for teachers to meet and work together (Neito 2003). The facilitators blocked all opportunities for dialogue and understanding of schools as spaces for quality management and ongoing development. The cascade model did not create possibilities for the enhancement of teacher professionality.
This study has shown that the Department of Education prefers this model because of its cost effectiveness in cascading new information and policies to schools. However it has revealed that much of the information content gets lost or watered down within the various tiers of the cascade. The implication of this ‘loss’ or ‘watering down’ of information or policies down the cascade structures is that these become distorted at the level of implementation, at schools. There are dangers therefore that the cascade model results in information distortion.
Locating themselves within the inquiry-based paradigm (Zeichner) STTs questioned the cascade model as a tool for personal development for policy implementation and actually felt that it did not work for them.
Teachers at the lowest rung of the cascade were reasonably satisfied with their training and whatever information was cascaded to them for IQMS implementation. School Training Teams felt that the cascade model did not work for them, and yet other teachers who are part of the staff felt that it worked. From the data analysis teachers who had been trained by STTs had even lesser time devoted to their training than time devoted to the training of School Training Teams. The data produced from the training teams also revealed that they left the workshops not fully aware of how IQMS will work in their particular contextual reality and how they will manage to prepare teachers with their limited understanding and experience. Teachers continue to view teaching as a technical exercise and define “being teacher” as one who is a “doer”.
Drawing from Zeichner’s theory of teacher development teachers, especially those placed at the level of policy implementation, continue to construct themselves as
‘recipients’ of knowledge. Operating within a behaviorist paradigm they tend to have accepted their status as docile, factory workers. In spite of the transforming policies like IQMS, the model fails to disrupt and transform teachers, their professionalism and their professionality for whole-school development.
Within the behaviorist paradigm the cascade model has contributed to de- professionalization of teachers. More disturbing however is the fact that teachers continue to accept their de-professionalized status.